They're marginally better than city-data when it comes to keeping the reactionary bullshit out the development forums... I'm not going to complain about their existence but I certainly don't want to provide content for them.

They're marginally better than city-data when it comes to keeping the reactionary bullshit out the development forums... I'm not going to complain about their existence but I certainly don't want to provide content for them.

Two years ago, Mountain View rebuffed Google’s bid to massively expand its headquarters. A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up San Jose’s long-shot bid to scuttle Major League Baseball’s federal antitrust exemption and allow the Oakland A’s to relocate to land across from SAP Center.

The 2015 rejections created a match made in commercial real estate heaven for both spurned suitors, which are now negotiating a deal to bring Google to downtown San Jose.

Instead of bringing in a money-sucking professional sports franchise, San Jose redeployed the assembled parcels and offered them to a corporate citizen that could transform the city. Google can afford to buy the land, finance its own building, contribute badly needed tax revenue and create high-wage employment. Northern California’s largest city provides Google a way to escape traffic nightmares and a housing crisis as it rockets to a trillion dollar valuation.

The company’s parent, Alphabet Inc., is dabbling in a host of futuristic “moonshot” ventures that include robotics, driverless cars and flying vehicles. With facilities all over the world and no shortage of hubris or cash, Google has seen its universe-changing ambitions stymied by the parochial hand-wringing of a municipality wary of putting too many alien eggs in one basket. San Jose, on the other hand, has spent 35 years and a couple of billion dollars of its taxpayers’ money to become Silicon Valley’s capital, yet it still plays fifth fiddle to Palo Alto, San Francisco, Mountain View and Cupertino. San Jose has seen many dashed hopes and false starts.

A downtown mixed use development initiative collapsed after the dot-com implosion. Subsidized retailers exited. Plans for Apple, Cisco and Tandem (remember them?) to locate their campuses in Coyote Valley disappeared in economic cycles and acquisitions. Meanwhile, Santa Clara won the pro sports lottery, Santana Row flourished, Campbell became an entertainment destination and Sunnyvale turned into a residential hot spot of million dollar-plus homes.

Optimists knew the wave would head south and San Jose would be caught up in the swell. The peninsula became too expensive, crowded and wary of hypergrowth, and San Francisco’s boom has become an angry mess of gentrification-sparked class warfare and culture shifts.

San Jose’s downtown, at the same time, is coming into its own, with an expanding roster of millennial-friendly yoga studios, coffee shops, craft cocktail bars and microbreweries. The ugly tan ’80s-era buildings that dominate the flat-topped skyline have been dressed up with LED mood lighting and murals. Even pedestrian crosswalks are being turned into painted art pieces in a bid to add more color.

Mountain View used to be a dump, literally. The Google campus and Shoreline Amphitheatre are built on landfill. Its now-trendy downtown used to be filled with low-budget restaurants and dated retail.

Google’s arrival will help San Jose’s jobs-housing imbalance, a phenomenon that has left San Jose with some of the valley’s worst parks, schools and roads, and a hollowed-out police force.

For years, San Jose has provided housing for the lucrative job growth in other cities, which captured tax revenues and upgraded amenities for their residents while San Jose lagged.

Neighboring Santa Clara last year brushed off a nearly unanimous chorus of critics and plowed ahead with plans to build the 9 million-square-foot CityPlace Santa Clara adjacent to Levi’s stadium, which will create 24,760 jobs while only adding 1,360 residential units.

San Jose grew by nearly 10,000 residents in the past year—the biggest jump in Northern California. It can easily accommodate a campus of 20,000, which will represent less than 5 percent of the city’s jobs. Other cities are looking to go the other way and cool down job growth to preserve their communities. “We’re looking to increase the rate of housing growth, but decrease the rate of job growth,” Palo Alto Mayor Patrick Burt said last year.

With a robust transit infrastructure, Googlers can commute in from San Francisco, the South Valley or the Peninsula on an electrified Caltrain, and Fresno may soon be a 50-minute high-speed rail ride away.

Google made a smart decision—maybe the only decision it could make. San Jose is a behemoth, with land, housing, urban culture, rail lines and an international airport. It has a major city’s infrastructure and can support the ambitions of an expanding global technology leader. Apple and Facebook now hold major conferences here instead of in San Francisco, and the cool factor seems to be taking hold.

Hopefully, Google will see fit to plan a true urban campus that embraces the downtown and the community around it rather than one that seals its employees in a hermetic bubble with free food and ridiculous perks. Companies historically perform better in urban environments, and Google may benefit from a socially connected workforce as it tackles a transforming world.

We can debate the essential unfairness about displacing family-owned small businesses to make way for one of the world’s richest corporations. However, if the city can see fit to incentivize development, it can sprinkle a little love the other way—and it should, in the form of relocation assistance.

A smart agreement will avoid giving away the store with tax breaks, but it shouldn’t load the deal with labor carve-outs and red tape, things that drive up building costs and delay realization. San Jose should move fast to make this happen. Conditions can change quickly, and decades from now we don’t want to be talking about the one that got away.

SAN JOSE, Calif., July 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Western National Group has purchased a 6.5-acre parcel of land from Berryessa Properties, LLC — owners of the San Jose Flea Market, a family-run business that remains one of the largest outdoor markets of its kind in the nation — for multifamily residential and retail space. Western National Group plans to develop up to 560 multifamily units and approximately 37,000 sq. ft. of ground-floor retail space in the fifth phase at Market Park San Jose (www.marketparksanjose.com), a 120-acre, mixed-use, transit-oriented community adjacent to the Berryessa BART station, scheduled to open by the end of 2017.

Western National Group plans to develop up to 560 apartment units over 37,000 sq. ft. of street-level retail space on 6.5 acres of land in the fifth phase of Market Park San Jose (www.marketparksanjose.com), a 120-acre mixed-use community adjacent to the soon-to-open Berryessa BART station. Western National purchased the parcel from Berryessa Properties, LLC, owners of the San Jose Flea Market. Ralph Borelli and Chris Anderson of Borelli Investment Company acted as brokers for the transaction.
Western National Group plans to develop up to 560 apartment units over 37,000 sq. ft. of street-level retail space on 6.5 acres of land in the fifth phase of Market Park San Jose (www.marketparksanjose.com), a 120-acre mixed-use community adjacent to the soon-to-open Berryessa BART station. Western National purchased the parcel from Berryessa Properties, LLC, owners of the San Jose Flea Market. Ralph Borelli and Chris Anderson of Borelli Investment Company acted as brokers for the transaction.
With the proceeds from the sale of the current phase together with a previous transaction with KB Home to build 162 city-style townhomes on 5.6 acres of land, San Jose Flea Market will contribute $5,000,000 to the City of San Jose Dept. of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services to help pay for two city parks totaling approximately 7 acres, plus an additional $6,000,000 for utility infrastructure improvements in Market Park's North Village.

The land sale transactions have been brokered by Ralph Borelli and Chris Anderson of Borelli Investment Company, a commercial real estate firm that has served the Santa Clara Valley for 62 years.

"As Silicon Valley continues to grow, there's an ever-increasing need for places for people to live," said Ralph N. Borelli, chairman of Borelli Investment Company. "Market Park San Jose, located immediately adjacent to the soon-to-open Berryessa BART station, is ideally situated for families and individuals — whether they plan to work in downtown San Jose, at one of the Valley's many high-technology firms, or in Oakland or even San Francisco, which will be only about an hour away via convenient BART."

Modern one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments will be offered within a multi-building, mid-rise complex — with retail stores and restaurants occupying street-level spaces. The apartments will feature efficient design layouts highlighted by attractive accents and upscale finishes, in a location that's ideal for those with active lifestyles.

When added to the 449 townhomes and single-family residences previously built by KB Home or nearing completion within the community, the new apartments will bring the total number of housing units there to more than 1,000. Still planned are another 100,000 sq. ft. of supermarket-anchored retail space in a center to be developed in Market Park's North Village. The shopping center is scheduled for a 2019 opening.

The master-planned community is also envisioned to eventually host a separate South Village with an additional 1,818 residential units and up to 2,000,000 square feet of mid-rise office and retail space, plus parking. VTA and BART service, as well as a new interchange at Mabury Road and Highway 101, will allow for efficient transportation for the residents and those people employed at Market Park San Jose.

"The Market Park community is destined to become one of San Jose's signature mixed-use developments," Borelli remarked. "With affordable housing, retail and restaurants, future office space, neighborhood parks, lush greenbelts, and the Coyote Creek trail bisecting the community, this will be a uniquely welcoming and reinvigorating place to live."

For additional information about sales and leasing opportunities at Market Park San Jose, please contact Ralph Borelli or Chris Anderson at Borelli Investment Company. Visit www.borelli.com or call (408) 453-4700. Or go to the community's website at www.marketparksanjose.com.

The San Jose Flea Market continues to serve guests on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from dawn until dusk, excluding holidays, at 1590 Berryessa Road in San Jose. For more information, call (800) BIG-FLEA (244-3532) or visit them at www.sjfm.com.

About the San Jose Flea Market—For 57 years, the San Jose Flea Market has been a place where families have made memories while playing, shopping and eating together. Today, it remains one of the best destinations in the region to spend an inexpensive and fun-packed day. A small city with a life of its own, the San Jose Flea Market currently includes a farmer's market that's 1/4 mile long; an average of 3,000 vendor spaces weekly; 15 snack bars; 30 food, fruit and beverage carts; and a FunZone with a vintage carousel, mini-Ferris wheel, and playground with inflatable slides. More than three million people visit the San Jose Flea Market annually. Learn more about the San Jose Flea Market at www.sjfm.com.

About Borelli Investment Company—Now in its 62nd year in business, Borelli Investment Company is one of the oldest commercial real estate firms serving the Santa Clara Valley, Central Valley and Sacramento areas. The company provides a full range of commercial real estate services — from development and asset management to land sales and property management services — currently entitling over 3,000 lots — as well as general contracting through its SiliconX Construction affiliate. More information about Borelli Investment Company's services may be obtained by calling (408) 453-4700 or visiting www.borellli.com. For more details on sales and leasing opportunities at Market Park San Jose, visit www.marketparksanjose.com.

Janice Bitters
Commercial Real Estate Reporter
Silicon Valley Business Journal
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Adobe Systems is slated to buy a parcel of land in downtown San Jose that the company said will eventually hold a fourth office tower, growing its already massive, three-building downtown headquarters.

The new tower will have capacity for about 3,000 employees, more than doubling its current workforce in the city, which today sits at about 2,500 workers.

Adobe Systems Inc., the world's biggest maker of graphic design programs, has called downtown San Jose home more than two decades ago. The company has a three-building campus located at 345 Park Ave. and plans to add a fourth building at 333 W. San Fernando St.
VIEW SLIDESHOW
12 photos

Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced Thursday that it's in contract to buy the parcel at 333 W. San Fernando St. from Wolff Urban Development and JP DiNapoli Cos. The groups have not released a purchase price.

Wolff and DiNapoli have already gone through the entitlement process to get a major office development approved for the site. Late last year, the city of San Jose put the final stamp of approval on an 18-story mixed-use tower with more than 700,000 square feet of retail and office space and both underground and above-ground parking. The glass-encased building has a distinct design, with cutout decks for outdoor gathering spaces and ground-level retail.

In an interview last year, Lew Wolff, chairman and CEO of Wolff Urban Development, told the Business Journal that distinctive as the building design is, the proposal would potentially be a placeholder to get the entitlement process moving in hopes of securing a tenant or buyer for the property.

“We like it [the design] and we hope someone else does, but if they have a different approach we won’t turn them down,” he said in an interview with the Business Journal at the time.

In a blog post Thursday morning, Adobe said many of the specifics for the now development are still in the works, but promised to share more details early next year.

“Expanding our facilities will allow us to hire additional talent to research and build products, serve our customers and continue to grow across virtually every part of our business,” Donna Morris, executive vice president of customer and employee experience at Adobe, said in the blog post. “We’re moving forward on the planning and building process as quickly as we can.”

Like Adobe, Wolff and DiNapoli are no strangers to downtown office development. The two have developed Park Center Plaza, which is now known as CityView Plaza, the San Jose Hilton and the Almaden Financial Plaza.

In a statement provided to the Business Journal Thursday, John DiNapoli, president at JP DiNapoli Cos. praised Wolff and his father Phil, who is the director at DiNapoli Cos., for their efforts in the city's downtown core.

"Lew and my father led redevelopment of the Central Business District when others turned their backs on downtown San Jose," he said, noting that those efforts helped to attract the Adobe expansion that would "add another vital element to Downtown San Jose."

And indeed, for San Jose, this is another big win in a series of major announcements in the last couple months.

In June, Google announced it was looking to build between 6 million and 8 million square feet in a mixed-use campus in downtown, near the Diridon Transit Station. The city is currently working out a deal with the Mountain View-based tech giant to buy a handful of key parcels in the area.

Last week, downtown San Jose saw a major milestone when the building at 303 Almaden sold for $80.15 millio n, or a record $509 per square foot for the area.

And while downtown San Jose has seen numerous tries at a renaissance in past years, none have stuck the way many hoped.

That might be changing with the recent attention the 10th largest city in the U.S. has been getting this year, paired with an upcoming building boom that will bring hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space to the downtown core, alongside more than 6,000 units in the coming years, if everything in the pipeline comes to fruition.

But Adobe has had faith in downtown for years. The company was the first major tech group to buy up real estate more than two decades ago when they placed their three-building, 900,000-square-foot office complex at 345 Park Ave., which is across the street at West San Fernando Street, from where Adobe plans to expand.

“We’re thrilled to see many months of work with Adobe and its partners culminate in this announcement of Adobe’s bold expansion of their global headquarters in San Jose, further enhancing Downtown’s burgeoning momentum as Silicon Valley’s urban center,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement Thursday. “We applaud Adobe for its catalytic role in driving innovation in the Valley over the last quarter century, and we thank its employees for their strong ethos of corporate responsibility which has made the company a wonderful community partner, and a global leader in sustainability.”

Janice Bitters
Commercial Real Estate Reporter
Silicon Valley Business Journal
RELATED CONTENT
Crane Watch update: new projects added and more on the way
NYC investors double money with downtown San Jose office tower flip
San Jose's Diridon hub draws another million-square-foot development
4 big things San Jose and Google need to hash out for the Diridon deal
HOME OF THE DAY
Stunning View Residence Combines Contemporary Design with Natural Beauty SPONSOR LISTING
Stunning View Residence Combines Contemporary Design with Natural Beauty
See All Homes of the Day
Adobe Systems is slated to buy a parcel of land in downtown San Jose that the company said will eventually hold a fourth office tower, growing its already massive, three-building downtown headquarters.

The new tower will have capacity for about 3,000 employees, more than doubling its current workforce in the city, which today sits at about 2,500 workers.

Adobe Systems Inc., the world's biggest maker of graphic design programs, has called downtown San Jose home more than two decades ago. The company has a three-building campus located at 345 Park Ave. and plans to add a fourth building at 333 W. San Fernando St.
VIEW SLIDESHOW
12 photos

Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced Thursday that it's in contract to buy the parcel at 333 W. San Fernando St. from Wolff Urban Development and JP DiNapoli Cos. The groups have not released a purchase price.

Wolff and DiNapoli have already gone through the entitlement process to get a major office development approved for the site. Late last year, the city of San Jose put the final stamp of approval on an 18-story mixed-use tower with more than 700,000 square feet of retail and office space and both underground and above-ground parking. The glass-encased building has a distinct design, with cutout decks for outdoor gathering spaces and ground-level retail.

In an interview last year, Lew Wolff, chairman and CEO of Wolff Urban Development, told the Business Journal that distinctive as the building design is, the proposal would potentially be a placeholder to get the entitlement process moving in hopes of securing a tenant or buyer for the property.

“We like it [the design] and we hope someone else does, but if they have a different approach we won’t turn them down,” he said in an interview with the Business Journal at the time.

In a blog post Thursday morning, Adobe said many of the specifics for the now development are still in the works, but promised to share more details early next year.

“Expanding our facilities will allow us to hire additional talent to research and build products, serve our customers and continue to grow across virtually every part of our business,” Donna Morris, executive vice president of customer and employee experience at Adobe, said in the blog post. “We’re moving forward on the planning and building process as quickly as we can.”

Like Adobe, Wolff and DiNapoli are no strangers to downtown office development. The two have developed Park Center Plaza, which is now known as CityView Plaza, the San Jose Hilton and the Almaden Financial Plaza.

In a statement provided to the Business Journal Thursday, John DiNapoli, president at JP DiNapoli Cos. praised Wolff and his father Phil, who is the director at DiNapoli Cos., for their efforts in the city's downtown core.

"Lew and my father led redevelopment of the Central Business District when others turned their backs on downtown San Jose," he said, noting that those efforts helped to attract the Adobe expansion that would "add another vital element to Downtown San Jose."

And indeed, for San Jose, this is another big win in a series of major announcements in the last couple months.

In June, Google announced it was looking to build between 6 million and 8 million square feet in a mixed-use campus in downtown, near the Diridon Transit Station. The city is currently working out a deal with the Mountain View-based tech giant to buy a handful of key parcels in the area.

Last week, downtown San Jose saw a major milestone when the building at 303 Almaden sold for $80.15 millio n, or a record $509 per square foot for the area.

And while downtown San Jose has seen numerous tries at a renaissance in past years, none have stuck the way many hoped.

That might be changing with the recent attention the 10th largest city in the U.S. has been getting this year, paired with an upcoming building boom that will bring hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space to the downtown core, alongside more than 6,000 units in the coming years, if everything in the pipeline comes to fruition.

But Adobe has had faith in downtown for years. The company was the first major tech group to buy up real estate more than two decades ago when they placed their three-building, 900,000-square-foot office complex at 345 Park Ave., which is across the street at West San Fernando Street, from where Adobe plans to expand.

“We’re thrilled to see many months of work with Adobe and its partners culminate in this announcement of Adobe’s bold expansion of their global headquarters in San Jose, further enhancing Downtown’s burgeoning momentum as Silicon Valley’s urban center,” Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement Thursday. “We applaud Adobe for its catalytic role in driving innovation in the Valley over the last quarter century, and we thank its employees for their strong ethos of corporate responsibility which has made the company a wonderful community partner, and a global leader in sustainability.”

Do you think they'll build the 333 W. San Fernando plan from Wolfe and DiNapoli, or start from scratch, I guess I haven't been keeping up with the company for the last 3-4 years their stock has been booming. Based on their 3 towers at Adobe HQ they will likely build a tower as tall as those. I wish there were a better way to deal with the parking situation though. Like adding to the existing garage behind the lot.

Do you think they'll build the 333 W. San Fernando plan from Wolfe and DiNapoli, or start from scratch, I guess I haven't been keeping up with the company for the last 3-4 years their stock has been booming. Based on their 3 towers at Adobe HQ they will likely build a tower as tall as those. I wish there were a better way to deal with the parking situation though. Like adding to the existing garage behind the lot.

Your guess is as good as mine, but from the Adobe exec in the article:

Donna Morris, executive vice president of customer and employee experience at Adobe, said in the blog post. “We’re moving forward on the planning and building process as quickly as we can.”

Cita:
Francom said Adobe is currently leasing a space across the street from its Park Avenue headquarters on Almaden Boulevard in the Heritage Bank of Commerce building, which it will use to house the growth of employees until its new building is complete. Adobe has been using the Heritage building to temporarily house employees while the company conducted a remodel of its headquarters.
This is a strong indication that Adobe will be fast tracking this building!

SAN JOSE — Adobe Systems, just days after it revealed plans for a huge expansion in downtown San Jose, confirmed Wednesday that it’s signed a lease for additional offices in the city’s urban core.

The tech giant has leased 65,000 square feet in an office tower at 10 S. Almaden Blvd., said Erik Hallgrimson, an executive managing director with Cushman & Wakefield, which worked with another commercial realty brokerage, Colliers International, to arrange the lease. The tower is about two blocks from Adobe’s existing headquarters and near a site the company has agreed to buy for its major expansion.

“This space will be used to accommodate employees while on-going work-space renovations take place at our headquarters and for any growth leading up to the opening of the new tower,” Adobe said Wednesday through a representative.

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Earlier this month, Adobe revealed it would dramatically broaden its downtown San Jose headquarters through the purchase of a property at 333 W. San Fernando St., a short distance from its main offices.

About 3,000 Adobe workers could be employed in a proposed office tower at the West San Fernando expansion site, which is just north of Adobe’s headquarters at 345 Park Ave.

For the most recent lease transaction of 65,000 square feet, Adobe signed a five-year rental agreement, Hallgrimson said. The company expects to move into the new offices in early November.

2017-07-adobe-san jose-downtown-campus-expand-diridon-03
Work and gathering areas inside the Adobe Systems headquarters in downtown San Jose. Adobe Systems
Adobe’s expansion quest in downtown San Jose comes amid disclosures that Mountain View-based Google and its development partner, realty firm Trammell Crow, have embarked on an ambitious effort to create a transit village near the Diridon transit station and the SAP entertainment complex.

An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Google employees could work downtown in the Google village.

“Downtown San Jose has finally gotten the momentum it deserves,” said Bob Staedler, a principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a development and planning consultancy.

As dramatic as the Adobe and Google expansions are for downtown San Jose, they aren’t they only recent events that point toward a major upswing in activity in the city’s urban core. Other tech firms are establishing new or wider beachheads downtown.

Seattle-based Amazon’s Lab 126 unit has rented one to two floors at the Towers @ 2nd office complex near the corner of North Second and East Santa Clara streets. Cohesity is renting 40,000 square feet at 300 Park Ave. near Woz Way.

SJM-ADOBE-0720-WEB2A million-square-foot tech campus is being proposed by realty developers TMG Partners and Valley Oak Partners, which want to replace an old industrial district on the banks of the Guadalupe River with new offices.

And Trammell Crow is pushing ahead with its plans to develop a big office, retail and housing complex next to the future Google village.

In recent weeks, investors also paid $80.2 million for an office tower at 303 Almaden and $64 million for the Westin San Jose hotel, formerly called the Sainte Claire Hotel.